Friends are a wonderful thing. Doing some unfinished housekeeping. Met with a bunch of friends this week. Enjoyed most. Thanked others. Apologized to two. One in person, one by email, both long overdue. Got an apology of sorts from another. Life being what it is. Change being what it is. But the world is full of wonderful people. And it’s amazing how gracious people are.
Source date (UTC): 2012-05-07 23:59:00 UTC
VIRUS
So, it looks like my macbook pro caught a virus. Either at home or the airport. Not sure where. There are logs and a few other artifacts on it. A couple of file sharing trees. First time that’s happened to me. Been trying to clean it up all afternoon. Took one computer down, killing the hard drive. Now the other seems to be infected too. Brought it to apple , restored from time machine. Reinfected the new disk… sigh. This time, new antivirus first, then restore only the apps and documents without the settings. Hopefully that works.
Source date (UTC): 2012-05-07 23:45:00 UTC
I LOVE THE APPLE STORE AND APPLE SERVICE
Was having some odd problems with my 17″ Macbook Pro – intermittent performance problems. Took it in. Hard drive was starting to fail. (I really need a SSD in that machine, I”m too hard on it.) I backed it up. They replaced it under warranty. Five hours later they send me an email telling me to pick it up. Just love my Apple products.
Source date (UTC): 2012-05-07 18:42:00 UTC
USING THE LEFT’S TACTICS AGAINST THEM : A PERSONAL EXAMPLE
Yesterday the left sent a typical representative to harass the small meeting of conservatives. He came with a camera. He was black. He was young. When he was told that we weren’t going to allow filming, he tried to use a hidden microphone to record the meeting.
So, I went after him using the left’s tactics: I just insulted him as a dishonest scumbag that wasn’t interested in allowing free speech, only speech they and their ilk agreed with. They’re just terrorists bent on disrupting honest debate and the free exchange of ideas. They aren’t there to learn they’re there to intimidate and oppress. That’s what the left does.
But this process is always started by the left, and society degenerates, and rational discourse is lost because of it.
Society is built on restraint. It’s destruction is based upon the loss of it.
Fox News was developed as a reaction to CNN’s left bent. Conservative talking points were a reaction to the left’s use of ‘staying on message’ by repeating mantras rather than asking questions. The conservative think tanks were a reaction to the ownership of the mainstream media by the left. The liberation think tanks, and the Mises institute in particular, were a reaction to the ideological innovations of the communist community organizers.
It’s offensive to conservatives to use these tactics. Until they use them. but personally I find it liberating.
I made the guy leave. There is no point having a recording or a video of someone calling you out on your dishonesty. God knows they don’t want that kind of thing spreading on the internet. I mean, you’re welcome to get into a shouting match with me and I’ll win. I learned from Friedman and Rothbard: never give up, never surrender, never stop. THe left depends upon our distaste for ill manners.
We have to make it good manners to shout down the left and adopt any tactic that they throw at us. There isn’t any other choice.
Source date (UTC): 2012-05-07 11:20:00 UTC
INTERESTING: A DEROGATORY COMMENT ABOUT LIBERTARIANS
Yesterday, I went to a conservative political event and listened to two candidates. One of the comments they made was that the group was for ‘conservatives not libertarians’. (Really.) Which was followed by another giggle over a quote by a libertarian candidate — the implication being that libertarians will never get elected.
Now I’m aware that libertarians and conservatives argue from different frameworks, and I”m aware that those frameworks are intellectual and economic on the libertarian end, and emotional and moral-historical-allegorical on the conservative end. But I”m also aware that conservatives have failed to produce an intellectual program, or a policy program to counter the progressive left. Most progress at resisting the left has come not from conservatives, but from the libertarians.
It’s also ironic that the Village Voice can call me a member of the ‘Hard Right’ yet I’m not ‘right’ enough to get into a conservative political meeting.
I’m working on providing conservatives an intellectual framework, so that libertarians and conservatives can cooperate, and so that we libertarians can leverage some of the conservative movement.
But I am also struck by the vision of how difficult it will be to speak about political ideas in intellectual terms to conservatives.
I mean, libertarians tend to be ‘smart folks’. And Like democrats, conservatives all too often are not.
The thought leadership battle is between libertarians and liberals. The democrats and conservatives are just a measure of how well each side’s intellectuals do at convincing the middle of the curve.
Source date (UTC): 2012-05-07 11:08:00 UTC
http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/22271192791/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-8-notes-essayTHE ONLY GOOD ARTICLE ON PITCHING VC’S I’VE EVER READ
(I would add, that your team should to be tight, and have clear roles.)
Source date (UTC): 2012-05-07 10:22:00 UTC
http://modeledbehavior.com/2012/05/07/the-ideas-of-economists-and-philosophers/http://modeledbehavior.com/2012/05/07/the-ideas-of-economists-and-philosophers
@Karl Smith
RE: “Yet, [people] seem unwilling to give up on tribal beliefs. What accounts for this?”
And, speaking of facts, what evidence do you have that people ever, under any conditions, cease to act according to their tribal sentiments?
I know you can’t either grasp or accept this, but you’re argument is unscientific.
Your approach redistributes status, power and identity along with money.
The people who care most about losing that status, power and identity are those who are invested in status, power, and identity rather than money.
You are stifled because your VIEW OF MAN IS SUBECT TO THE REDUCTIO ERROR.
So the question is not how you and your SUBSET OF FACTS prevail in order to support your reductio ideology, but given the TOTALITY of facts, how we can implement a coordinated set of policy provisions.
The reason you argue against this is that you, like Krugman and DeLong, are not as interested in prosperity as you are in creating a class of political managers that are the sole possessors of status, power and identity, and the citizens are subjects. That might work in a small state. But it will not work in the american empire.
In other words, you’re proof of the theory. 🙂
But at least you’re honest about the subset of facts, even if you’re dishonest because you ignore the more salient facts: that money is a route to status, power and identity, and that humans desire to consume those three things above all others.
Selective chose of FACTS is not scientific. It’s ideological.
Source date (UTC): 2012-05-07 09:43:00 UTC
LUCIANOS BELLEVUE
“I know it’s not on the menu, but can you make me a carbonara?”
“Sure.”
Spaghetti, Olive Oil, Cream, Parmesan, Bacon, Eggs. Simple comfort food.
To die for.
Source date (UTC): 2012-05-05 18:20:00 UTC
PROGRESS ON WEIGHT
Down to 186 from 210. That’s down 12 from my average, down 24 from my peak. Jeans dropped from from 38 to 34. I suspect after the next ten pounds I’ll have a 32 or 33 inch waist. Neck is down to an easy 16, headed to 15.5. My suit jackets overlap now by six inches. If I can lose the next ten I’m back to buying clothes off the rack, and the italian cut suits will fit me again. Which shouldn’t necessarily be an ambition, but it’s better to have the option to buy your clothes off the rack than not. At my height, the clothing choices are limited.
It’s the paleo-ulcer diet. I don’t recommend it. But it works. 🙂
Source date (UTC): 2012-05-05 18:06:00 UTC
LOOKING AT DENIAL
As long as you believe in human equality, it’s pretty hard to complain about people who believe in the omniscience and omnipotence of divinities. Denials are rampant on either side of the political spectrum. If you can get a population where everyone’s IQ is over about 106, and you’ll have neither problems of material inequality or pervasive mysticism. But we don’t have a population over 106, we have one distributed either side of 100 — and its declining. Its declining largely because of the denial of inequality, leading to policies that allow the expansion of the lower classes. … Subsiding the breeding of the lower classes at the expense of the middle classes is not a good idea for anyone. And denying these facts is the source of our conflict. Denial is not a monopoly of the left or right. Denial is an ideologically pervasive problem.
Source date (UTC): 2012-05-05 12:25:00 UTC